166 Sporting Sketches in Pen and Pencil. 



laid choke. It couldn't be, except in the so-called humorous papers, and 

 people no more went a-fishing in tight stockings, pumps, and rosettes then 

 than they do now. Would you be surprised to hear that gaiters were 

 extant and long leg-boots ; and that the coats, though cut straight in 

 front, were very like the sacks of the present, and the hats were like 

 our broad-brimmed felts, only a little higher in the crown, and more 

 ventilative and cooler therefore. True, braces weren't invented then, and 

 one tied one's knickers or bags up by strings called "points" on to the 

 skirts of one's coat, the ends being left in ornamental bows at the 

 waist. Trust me, Walton has never yet been appropriately illustrated in 

 this respect. The cuts were taken from likenesses of various persons 

 handed down; and when people had their portraits taken in those days 

 they did as they do now — put their best clothes on. 



But of all the pictures in Moses Brown, I think the one of " the 

 contemplative man " is the funniest. Seated at the mouth of a cave in 

 the rocks, in the sort of pose which very conceited people do take when 

 their likenesses are taken, even to an affected point of the toe which 

 might be possible by dint of great exertion, but that is all. He sits 

 with an inane grin, contemplating nothing in particular in the distance. 

 His rod, reclining on the ground, should, if perspective is aught but a 

 name, be from fifty to eighty yards in length. The rocky mountain at 

 his back, on which goats quite as big as tomcats are grazing, is 

 confronted by the height of "the contemplative," full ten feet high, 

 while the river in front cannot be less than four feet broad, and through 

 some rushes not six feet from "the contemplative" creeps, quite unseen, 

 a beaver ; it might be meant for an otter, but it is a beaver, and a very 

 big one too, rather longer, indeed, from head to tail than the rivfer is 

 wide. I never look at that picture but I think that no one but Mr. B. 

 himself sat for the portrait, and I would like to wager a little that I am 

 not far wrong ; that self-satisfied smirk must be his. 



However, we are getting away from grayling, and meandering some- 

 what ; but what I meant to say was that my first acquaintance with 

 the grayling was in Moses's edition of Walton, and even Moses couldn't 

 spoil the freshness of those scenes in Derbyshire. Walton, per se, is very 



